Suggestion: update and make mandatory Hall of novice tutorial

[Esmoire]

I think what we need specifically is to have Hall of the Novice have another stage or two at 50, to prepare players for full party play. Cover stuff like playing with another tank, using Esuna, using limit break, taking stack markers up to melee range, etc. You can make it mandatory, or even just put a mount reward on there or something. That alone will goad people into trying it.

[RokkuEkkusu]

I agree, especially the requirement for Hall of the Novice. Currently, the game only has players unlock the Hall for the main story, but not necessarily do them.

My suggestions for when: Before a new player enters their first dungeon duty (regardless of sastacha or if they purchased a story skip to go to holminister) they must do the hall of the novice to learn how to fight in a party.
As there is also 2 level 10 guildhests, I would also suggest putting the first couple of exercises be mandatory before then.

Funny you should mention that. The Guildhests "Hero on the Halfshell" and "More than a Feeler" used to be mandatory for 2.1 main story progression, but the devs took that requirement out in a later patch.

[Roda]

Really, the game could just use a better system of tutorials overall. When it comes to AoEs, as an example, the game isn't really very clear about how exactly they work anyway. It's sort of left up to the player to either parse the tooltip (which usually requires some pre-knowledge of the game's mechanics), just try it (which new/nervous players are unlikely to due when they feel the pressure is on), or hunt out training dummies to puzzle it out themselves. It shouldn't be up to the player to puzzle out the specifics of conals vs columns vs character oriented AoEs vs target oriented AoEs when the game just gives fairly meaningless distance numbers as guidance.

I'm reminded of Black Desert Online where, when you go into your skill tree, it actually shows you little videos of how moves work and how they can/should be chained together. Not that FF14 is anywhere near as intricate in it's combat as BDO can be but if a action oriented game like BDO can do it there's no reason why FF14 can't do it with it's fewer moves and simpler systems.

I mean it's not really that dense.. Read tool tips -> single target does 200 damage, aoe does 90 damage -> basic math and understanding how shapes work -> use aoe when 3 targets or more are close enough to get hit, otherwise use single target. All the information we need is available as soon as we need it (sometimes before) and he fact that some people get as far as they do in the game without understanding something basic like 220+330+480 < (3+x)(120+140+120) is just mind boggling @@. Like, I thought it was common form to read a tooltip of a skill when you get it. Not doing so would be like going into a d&d session and casting fireball in an area full of your teammates and going "oopsie I didn't know it did radial damage!"

[Claire_Pendragon]

I mean it's not really that dense.. Read tool tips -> single target does 200 damage, aoe does 90 damage -> basic math and understanding how shapes work -> use aoe when 3 targets or more are close enough to get hit, otherwise use single target. All the information we need is available as soon as we need it (sometimes before) and he fact that some people get as far as they do in the game without understanding something basic like 220+330+480 < (3+x)(120+140+120) is just mind boggling @@. Like, I thought it was common form to read a tooltip of a skill when you get it. Not doing so would be like going into a d&d session and casting fireball in an area full of your teammates and going "oopsie I didn't know it did radial damage!"

How much DPS potency is a single point of white or black mana worth on RDM? Also point me to where the tooltips show me that :P (You'd be surprised how this question isnt as simple as it first appears.) This helps you determine at which ranges of mana it is better to use which skills, for situations such as needing to move when u need to hard cast. (Not so much now that RDM has a new skill in ShB for this sort of thing, but there's exceptions) When you should still use manafication, and shouldnt, such as "is 55/55 too late?". (it wasnt last i checked, but maybe im wrong and its values are different now, which they probably are, now that RDM has scorch. But those values shouldnt change when you do/dont use manafication, despite its 5% dps increase change.)
Also the wording on sacred soil trips a lot of people up. Ive known a few people who thought it meant it reduced dmg by 90%, rather than by 10%.

EDIT: hit post limit for the day, so cant reply till tomorrow.

Understand the basics of the skills, do some practical testing, apply what you learned.

As someone who doesnt use ACT thats pretty hard to do, unless its a DRASTIC difference in damage. Otherwise its too hard to tell if its just rng, or if you're eyes are playing tricks on ya.
Again, I know what sacred soil says. Im just saying not all phrasing is the best it could be. (I forget which ability, but I think one of the tank ones almost came off as a double negative, and even SE felt the need to fix it, as it confused people. But since IDR which ability, I cant give ya a place to look.)

[Roda]

How much DPS potency is a single point of white or black mana worth on RDM? Also point me to where the tooltips show me that :P (You'd be surprised how this question isnt as simple as it first appears.) This helps you determine at which ranges of mana it is better to use which skills, for situations such as needing to move when u need to hard cast. (Not so much now that RDM has a new skill in ShB for this sort of thing, but there's exceptions) When you should still use manafication, and shouldnt, such as "is 55/55 too late?". (it wasnt last i checked, but maybe im wrong and its values are different now, which they probably are, now that RDM has scorch. But those values shouldnt change when you do/dont use manafication, despite its 5% dps increase change.)
Also the wording on sacred soil trips a lot of people up. Ive known a few people who thought it meant it reduced dmg by 90%, rather than by 10%.

EDIT: hit post limit for the day, so cant reply till tomorrow.

I mean I don't think it's up to the game to do the more intricate theorycrafting / uptime priorities for you... that's there to provide a way for your skill to grow as a player. Understand the basics of the skills, do some practical testing, apply what you learned..
As for the sacred soil thing, that's just a reading comprehension thing. It clearly says you will take 90% of the damage, not it will block 90% damage

[Gula]

I mean it's not really that dense.. Read tool tips -> single target does 200 damage, aoe does 90 damage -> basic math and understanding how shapes work -> use aoe when 3 targets or more are close enough to get hit, otherwise use single target. All the information we need is available as soon as we need it (sometimes before) and he fact that some people get as far as they do in the game without understanding something basic like 220+330+480 < (3+x)(120+140+120) is just mind boggling @@. Like, I thought it was common form to read a tooltip of a skill when you get it. Not doing so would be like going into a d&d session and casting fireball in an area full of your teammates and going "oopsie I didn't know it did radial damage!"

When I came off of other mmos, you did the skill that did the most damage. Some mmos didn't have combo systems either, or positionals. Even in classic FF, you're not hitting an enemy from behind, you're managing MP to get out as many spell-raga's as you could.

When I first started, I assure you it wasn't as simple to me as it is now.

[Mimilu]

I mean it's not really that dense.. Read tool tips -> single target does 200 damage, aoe does 90 damage -> basic math and understanding how shapes work -> use aoe when 3 targets or more are close enough to get hit, otherwise use single target.

You say that but I've seen sprouts use Fire II and Blizzard II on single targets, Spam Medica when a single target needs to be healed or Cure II for minor damage, or, in older expansion, use Topaz Carbuncle while in a party because "those are clearly the upgraded spells".
Not everyone is going to have the same experience with MMORPGs (and I'm assuming Tabletop RPGs) as you... >3>

[Roda]

You say that but I've seen sprouts use Fire II and Blizzard II on single targets, Spam Medica when a single target needs to be healed or Cure II for minor damage, or, in older expansion, use Topaz Carbuncle while in a party because "those are clearly the upgraded spells".
Not everyone is going to have the same experience with MMORPGs (and I'm assuming Tabletop RPGs) as you... >3>

And this is why I recommend having the hall of the novice reinforce aoe usage. But stating that people don't read the plain text numbers in front of them doesn't make me understand why they don't. :T

[Jojoya]

And this is why I recommend having the hall of the novice reinforce aoe usage. But stating that people don't read the plain text numbers in front of them doesn't make me understand why they don't. :T

Because the "plain text numbers" in front of them aren't plain. Tooltips are expressed in terms of Potency. Well, what does Potency mean? Nowhere in the game are we given a definition for Potency. Logic says bigger is probably better when it comes to DPS/HPS but we still don't exactly what we're dealing with.

As a new player, I though Potency simply meant "damage". I couldn't understand why my attack with a Potency of 200 was only doing 67 damage. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong to cause my attacks to end up so weak. It finally took going to google to find out what Potency means and how it worked with my stats to produce a damage value. If I hadn't already been familiar with damage calculations from playing WoW for years, I might still have not understood.

There are other things on tooltips that can be likewise confusing, possibly because of term holdovers from other FF games that the devs just assume everyone will understand without thinking about how many players new to the FF franchise have been attracted to this game and don't have that prior knowledge. I brought up Limit Break as something to be added because it wasn't until I did Aurum Vale for the first time and the group was yelling at me to "LB" the last boss adds that I became aware the Limit Break existed. I kept looking through my BRD abilities list trying to find one that might be abbreviated as LB and could only apologize to the group that I couldn't find an attack that was "LB". It was then they explained Limit Breaks to me. It doesn't help that Limit Break is listed under General instead with the other class/job combat abilities. It makes little sense to group such a powerful combat ability with non-combat options.

It makes even less sense to force players, especially new players, to go to outside sources to get an understanding of basic game concepts. The problem is the new player, especially if they've never played a MMO before, isn't going to know the right questions to be asking. Yet here we are and so it's little wonder that so much of the player base struggles between the lack of transparency within the game itself not to mention a mentor system where the majority of mentors have no desire to actually be mentoring.

[DPZ2]

And this is why I recommend having the hall of the novice reinforce aoe usage. But stating that people don't read the plain text numbers in front of them doesn't make me understand why they don't. :T

Greatest problem with this suggestion -- many classes don't have an AoE at the player level for which Hall of the Novice is designed.